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The new kids on the block
The quarrel between ancients and moderns was initiated by the latter; it is impossible for anyone with ears to hear to miss its announcement in the writings of, among others, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke. Machiavelli’s dismissal of the capacity for ancient political thought generally, and that of Plato in particular, to guide political action in Chapter XV of the Prince is echoed in Bacon’s explicit refusal in the Preface to The Great Instauration to allow his New Organon to be tried by the tribunal, of which Aristotle’s Organon is a part, and which is itself on trial. The fact the moderns contend they represent a radical departure from the modes and orders of all those who preceded them (an indication they collapsed the medievals into the ancients) demands we take their contention seriously. That the modern world appears to be radically different from the ancient makes it necessary we do so, that is, if we seek to understand it. The differences between ancient and modern philosophy (natural and political philosophy versus natural and political science) can readily be seen in their respective understandings of nature, man, and society. The ancients understood these to be harmoniously interconnected and interdependent; the moderns understand them to be in conflict and opposed to one another. To treat nature, man, and society independently in the following would be to subtly concede the point to the moderns, thus rather than comparing the ancient and the modern on each subject, we will examine their respective views on the whole. We will leave it to the reader to deepen the comparative analysis.
Ancients
In the Physics, Aristotle says some things exist by nature and others by other means (e.g., chance, convention, and artifice). Natural things have innate principles that govern their development; they come into being and develop on their own. Aristotle also lays out the four causal relations (material, efficient, formal, and final or telos) the full elaboration of which provides a complete understanding of any and every phenomenon. The dominant cause in Aristotle’s understanding is the final, that is, the ‘that for the sake of which.’ The full development of a thing is its nature, that which the development is directed toward is its end; one understands a thing in light of what it ought to become, not what it is when it begins the process or what it is at any intermediate stage. Plato expressed a similar thought in the Republic when Socrates discussed the forms; to understand what is ‘dog’ is not to understand each and every particular instance of dog, but to understand the form of dog that makes each an instance thereof. Plato and Aristotle’s understanding of nature implies the existence of a standard according to which all things can be measured or evaluated. For example, it is the nature of an acorn to become an oak tree; the naturalness of each and every acorn can be measured according to the degree to which it succeeds in doing so; one necessarily understands the acorn in light of the oak tree and not the oak tree in light of the acorn; if one had only ever seen acorns and never oak trees, one simply could not understand what an acorn was. This teleological view of nature is necessarily hierarchical not only within types, but across them, as those things that are for the sake of others are lower than those for which they are for the sake of. Ultimately, this places man in the center of all, as everything is for our use. This is not meant to imply, however, that man may use things in any which way; the nature of the thing provides a standard for its use—all things are for the sake of man’s proper use of them, which will often entail working hand in glove with nature to bring about its end by cultivation. The ancient understanding of man that finds expression in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics sees man in light of his end, which is happiness. Happiness was understood to be the full functioning of man’s body and soul: health and virtue (especially intellectual virtue). Just as nature is an ordered hierarchy, so too is man. According to the Platonic Socrates in the Republic, man’s soul rules his body and his reason (allied with his spirit) rules his desires within the soul. Such an individual would manifest the virtues of courage, moderation, justice, and wisdom (piety, too). For the ancients, man was a political animal by nature not because he lived in a city, but because his potential for logos (reason and speech), the cultivation of which requires a political community, points toward living therein. The ancients were not blind to the coming into being of cities: Socrates in the Republic provides an example of men coming together because they are in need of much; likewise, Aristotle in the Politics provides an account of the political community arising out of the sexual union of man and woman, which results in the family, the village, etc. The ancients simply did not understand city and man in light of their origins. The city comes into being for life but persists for the sake of the good life. Man, like all other things, was understood in light of that which he could become, a virtuous and happy man. Each man is born with some capacity for virtue; however, not all have the same capacity. Just as some men are stronger, faster, and more intelligent, so too some men have a greater capacity for or a natural inclination toward the virtues. Aristotle in the Ethics would suggest that one’s nature rests closer to the mean. As such, men can be ranked among each other; men are not equal in the city. The relation of the ancient city and man is governed by duty. Insofar as the polis enables man to become what he is, man ought to seek to preserve the city. This is why in the Republic it is just to compel the philosophers who arise in the city in speech to rule, and why it is not just to compel Socrates to rule in Athens; however, it is just for Socrates to fight on behalf of Athens, which he did (see Alcibiades’ speech in the Symposium for a discussion of his practice). One’s contribution to the survival of the city gives one a claim to rule in the city; however, not all claims are equal. The philosophers gave priority to virtue, the rich gave preference to their wealth, and the poor to their number—but each established their claim based upon that which they provided to the city. The city requires that its citizens be virtuous—at the very least they must be courageous, as a cowardly city will soon be enslaved. The requirement of citizen virtue points to education; here we see the interdependence of the happiness of both city and man—the happy city is that which has sufficient virtue within it to maintain itself; the happy man is he who is virtuous. As the relations of city and man are characterized by duty, the city must educate its citizens both so that they come to know their duties, and so that they come to develop the capacity of fulfilling their duties. In cultivating the virtue of its citizens through education, the city seeks to make them happy (of course there is a difference between the virtue of a citizen and that of a perfected human being; it goes without saying that no city, other than that established in speech, seeks to cultivate philosophers). It seeks to aid their development toward the end of man as given by nature. The education and conventions of the city seek to perfect that which nature provides. For the ancients, legitimacy of political rule is not a question, only the justness of the rule is. In other words, political authority is a given; the question is whether it is exercised for the good of the ruler or the common good. This is what underlies Aristotle’s distinctions of regimes in the Politics (kingship/tyranny; aristocracy/oligarchy; polity/democracy). Good rule is just rule.
Moderns
The approach of the moderns to nature can be seen in the first instance as a disagreement with the ancients regarding the proper use of knowledge. While ancient philosophy was directed toward contemplation, modern philosophy is directed toward the relief of man’s estate (cf. Bacon’s New Organon and Descartes’s Discourse on Method). Nature, moreover, for the moderns is not to be cultivated, but overcome; it is that which we are put here to rise above. In fact, Locke even goes so far as to suggest in the Second Treatise that (almost) all value is due to the efforts of man, (almost) none to nature. That which provided the ancients with ultimate understanding – the telos – is deemed by the moderns to be of no use and, thus, is banished from consideration. In its stead the moderns elevate the efficient cause to the dominant position; to understand a thing is now to understand how it came into being so that one can intervene in the process to bring about other ends. In other words, the goal of the moderns is to direct natural processes away from their natural ends. Note the moderns shift the driving question of inquiry from the ‘what’ to the ‘how.’ The most immediate effect of the primacy of efficient cause is to eliminate the hierarchy immanent in nature, for all things that have an efficient cause are deemed to be equally natural, for example, sickness and health are both by nature. Moreover, given that all is merely matter in motion, the correct tracing of efficient causes opens the possibility of conquering chance. The leveling of the natural order represents a demotion of man; now he is merely one beast among many. The primacy of the efficient cause leads to the primacy of genealogical understanding. In the case of man this means he is no longer to be understood in light of that which he can become (a virtuous human being) or his end (happiness) and what it requires (virtue), but in light of that which he was, the solitary, poor, brutish individual the life of which was nasty and short. The most radical extension of Hobbes’s formulation of man’s natural condition is found in Rousseau’s Second Discourse, where man is stripped even of his reason (Montesquieu also leaves man only the capacity for reason and not reason itself in the state of nature in The Spirit of the Laws). All things remain at the disposal of man; all things are for the sake of the relief of man’s estate; but no longer is man’s use of them limited to their proper use, rather he is free to make of them what he will. The difference in the ancient and modern understandings of man logically flows from the difference in their respective understandings of nature. On the understanding of the moderns, men are asocial by nature and political life is entirely conventional (see the establishment of the state via the social contract in Hobbes’s Leviathan or Rousseau’s Second Discourse or Social Contract). Each man is born with the capacity for choice (i.e., free will), which enables him to choose the means necessary for his self-preservation. Only the individual in question can decide which means are necessary, thus this choice ultimately is unlimited. When combined with the fact of natural scarcity, free will makes conflict between men inevitable. For the moderns, all men are equal by nature because all men are equally needy; all men have an exclusive interest in their continued existence and, thus, all men have the right to that which they deem necessary thereto. The moderns look for guidance in political life not to the provision of security but to the need of it – anyone can kill anyone else while they sleep. The moderns seek to utilize properly structured institutions to channel the interests of rights bearing individuals so that their pursuit of their own interest leads to the common good. The preeminent example of this can be found in The Federalist Papers. The good life becomes one of material contentment and psychological security (consider Montesquieu’s definition of liberty as the sentiment of security). So like the ancients the city comes into being for the sake of mere life but persists for the sake of the good life. For the moderns, the legitimacy of political authority rests on the consent of the governed as expressed in the social contract. This is the case even for Hobbes. The distinction between just and unjust rule is equated to the difference between like and dislike: a monarchy, according to Hobbes is the rule of one man that one likes, a tyranny is one that one dislikes.